Looking at the automake-patches that have accumulated, I saw one to
improve the error message if dependency tracking fails. Copied below.
It seems generally sensible to me, though I would change the wording a
little, and there is a spurious "the", so, revising the proposed text:
AC_MSG_FAILURE([Something went wrong bootstrapping makefile fragments
for automatic dependency tracking. If GNU make was not used, consider
re-running the configure script with MAKE="gmake" (or whatever is
necessary). You can also try re-running configure with the
'--disable-dependency-tracking' option to at least be able to build
the package (albeit without support for automatic dependency tracking).])
Confirm/deny? Further suggestions? --thanks, karl.
>From 040f4cc6b8300af4812549d69b07926e5423988a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Libor Bukata
Date: Thu, 23 May 2019 12:31:31 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] Improve the error message when the dependency tracking fails
The dependency tracking may fail with a non-intuitive error
that "Something went wrong ..." if the package expects
GNU make to process its Makefile.am files and other make
implementation is used by default (e.g., Solaris make).
This patch adds a hint to the error message that the user
may try to specify GNU make command as a configure argument.
Related bug with discussion:
https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=35848
* m4/depout.m4: Added a hint to the error message.
---
m4/depout.m4 | 10 ++
1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
diff --git a/m4/depout.m4 b/m4/depout.m4
index 431c07d..b8cec38 100644
--- a/m4/depout.m4
+++ b/m4/depout.m4
@@ -38,10 +38,12 @@ AC_DEFUN([_AM_OUTPUT_DEPENDENCY_COMMANDS],
| $MAKE -f - am--depfiles]) || am_rc=$?
done
if test $am_rc -ne 0; then
-AC_MSG_FAILURE([Something went wrong bootstrapping makefile fragments
-for automatic dependency tracking. Try re-running configure with the
-'--disable-dependency-tracking' option to at least be able to build
-the package (albeit without support for automatic dependency tracking).])
+AC_MSG_FAILURE([Something went wrong during bootstrapping of makefile
+fragments for automatic dependency tracking. If the GNU make is not
+used by default, consider to rerun the configure script with MAKE="gmake".
+You can also try to rerun configure with the
'--disable-dependency-tracking'
+option to at least be able to build the package (albeit without support
+for automatic dependency tracking).])
fi
AS_UNSET([am_dirpart])
AS_UNSET([am_filepart])
--
1.8.3.1
